1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to food preparation systems and more particularly to a system and method that displays the position of a food item, such as a pizza, as it travels through an enclosed conveyorized oven.
2. Description of Related Art
There are many types of ovens known in the art for cooking food items such as deck ovens, conveyor ovens and carousel ovens. A typical deck oven comprises a discrete cooking chamber having a back, sides, a top, a bottom and an opening for an access door. The food item is placed into the cooking chamber through the access door and remains in the chamber for the desired cooking time. To check the cooking status of the food item a user must open the access door and peer into the cooking chamber. Once the food item is cooked to the desired level, as determined by repeatedly opening the access door as described above, the food item it is removed from the cooking chamber via the access door.
As an alternative to wasting time and heat energy by opening and closing the access door to the cooking chamber, conveyorized ovens are well known in the art to transport food items through the cooking chamber. One known conveyorized oven employs a continuous conveyor belt for moving food items through the cooking chamber where the cooking chamber comprises a top, a bottom, opposing essentially closed sides and opposing slotted ends. The cooking chamber is typically provided with heating elements located above and below the conveyor belt, where the conveyor belt is typically driven by a drive roller at one end of the belt with the belt passing through the slotted ends of the cooking chamber to transport the food items into and out of the cooking chamber. In addition to controlling the temperature of the cooking chamber, the speed of the drive roller may be adjusted to vary the cooking time of food items by varying the time for the items to advance through the cooking chamber. While using this type of conveyorized oven, it is difficult to ascertain the position of the food item in the cooking chamber because typically the only openings in the oven to peer into are the slots in the opposing ends of the cooking chamber or through a small access door typically in the oven section.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art for ascertaining the position of a food item as it advances through an conveyorized oven, without having to open an access door and peer into the oven.